When Government Takes Up Bullying

One of the dangers of oversized government is the impact it has on the average citizen. Another danger is that government can become a bully to people it disagrees with. It is becoming very obvious that the current administration has no problem using the government to bully people who do not agree with administration policies.

The National Review posted a story yesterday about emails between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) regarding conservative political groups.

The article reports:

The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agency’s enforcement division in at least one case sought and received tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American Future Fund, before recommending that the commission prosecute it for violations of campaign-finance law. Lerner, the former head of the IRS’s exempt-organizations division, worked at the FEC from 1986 to 1995, and was known for aggressive investigation of conservative groups during her tenure there, too.

Under Rule 6103, the IRS is prohibited from sharing confidential taxpayer information, but the e-mail suggests that Lois Lerner may have shared the information in spite of the law.

There is a pattern to these “:phony scandals.” All of them include an arrogance on the part of the Executive Branch of our government that simply ignores both the law and Congressional oversight. There seems to be an element of corruption that has leaked into a number of areas in the Executive Branch. The Congress needs to hold the people who broke the law accountable.

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